I cooked two bomb dishes in the last two weeks. The first was a helluva spaghetti and meatballs. Now for those of you who know me well, probably only my wife unfortunately, you’ll know that I don’t really like ground beef. I think it has a gamey taste that pretty much makes me want to barf directly back into my meal. So in order to make money meatballs, I use other ground meat. This time I used ground turkey (pretty much tasteless and fatless) and ground sausage meat (pretty much the tastiest and fattiest ground meat in the world). As I have been doing recently, I went with an Earthbound Farms recipe. Having cooked various meatball and meatloaf recipes in the past, I was pretty skeptical of this one due to the shear amount of ingredients involved. Beyond the standard cheese, milk, and breadcrumbs, it wanted every damn spice and herb in the kitchen. But whatever, I was feeling it. After throwing all of the ingredients into a bowl, I proceeded to use two of my favorite gadgets – a stand mixer and an ice cream scooper. I used the mixer to fold everything together, and the ice cream scooper to portion out evenly sized meatballs onto parchment paper, which is pretty money in its own right. I then covered them with plastic wrap and let them sit overnight. The next day I was in heaven. I ate them plain, I ate them with spaghetti, I ate them in sandwiches. They really were some of the best I’ve ever had.
Next up on the docket was chicken tortilla soup, which I’ve cooked probably a half million times before. It is one of my favorite soups if only for its fantastic broth. But I’m always disappointed that in the end, the only thing I end up chewing is chicken and tortillas. This time around, the Whole Foods recipe kiosk pulled through. It spit out a chicken tortilla soup recipe that included corn, spinach, and copious amounts of fresh chopped cilantro on top. This time, unlike my previous attempt, I remembered to set aside some fresh chopped red onions. So for this go round, I had my standard chicken and tortillas, but also cilantro, fresh chopped onions, spinach, and corn. With a fuller bowl, I was much more satisfied.
Tags: earthbound farms, meatballs, tortilla soup
November 23, 2010 at 2:27 pm |
Man, my grandmother was from Sicily and she made the most amazing meatballs I ever tasted, like you had died and gone to meatball heaven. Sadly, she didnt leave a recipe for us so I’ve been trying to work it out on my own… slowly working my through the meatball recipes here, I still cant figure out what her secret ingredient was though!!!